Wednesday, April 15, 2009

3.1 Initial Impressions



Dual Specs
...are awesome. Works as advertised, and Exelus is now officially Elemental/Restoration and the young Paladin is now Retribution/Holy. It feels like a huge restriction has been lifted in terms of how I will be able to enjoy the game and help out guildies (and do it with less toons!). Flexibility is at the core of hybrid classes, and we just got a lot more... flexible. /flex

Later this week we have Naxx10 and Naxx25 runs coming up, and I'm very much looking forward to the idea of being able to fill either role of DPS/Heals, even mid-stream! For example, when Elemental Ex is "tanking" one of the Four Horsemen in 10-man he's able to keep himself alive with Lesser Healing Wave spam, but it can get dicey. By contrast, as Resto it's easysauce thanks to Earth Shield and Riptide - also freeing me up throw extra heals on the other ranged "tank" as needed.

Exorcism
Got the Ret (and Holy!) Paladin into Hellfire last night, and was happy to find that Exorcism certainly does work against all mobs now. In terms of DPS rotation, he feels a lot more like a Death Knight now that there's another button to push. I updated my single-target FCFS (first come first serve) macros to this castsequence: J, CS, Ex, J CS. Seemed to work out nicely but I need to verify if it's the best way to go.

Argent Tournament
The new area in northern Icecrown is very cool - from a lore/RP perspective, you certainly do get the sense that something's building, that the troops are preparing for war. This is the Isle of Quel'Danas 2.0, and I'm looking forward to spending more time up there.

New Textures
Certain parts of the Exodar seemed to be sporting a slightly-darker color scheme - to better match the earth-tones of Northrend perhaps. These slight visual improvements are a welcome change, it's good to know that Blizzard is intersted in going back to revisit old zones to keep things fresh.

70s Porn Star
Yes, I know they're coming back (thanks a lot Jason Giambi), but I was surprised to find that Ex grew a mustache overnight. I was so irritated/distraught I took him straight to a barber and dropped 8g on a new face. Apparently I'm not alone, as the "Great Mustache Controversy of Patch 3.1" has spawned a WowInsider post and a dozen-page-long thread on the forums.

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4 comments:

Jason Beebe said...

If my characted was Dranaei, I would leave the mustache. The 70s porn star look is back in.
Galyan

Algaran said...

Exorcism will generally do more damage then CS, so I would place it above CS in priority on a FCFS macro.

Algaran said...

I should have mentioned that this is for your current level. Once you get SoM, then CS will always proc a seal and then Exorcism will get relegated back to a lower priority

Savin (Nay) Wangtal said...

Tell me when you get a chance to try out Prot (if you ever do) and take him out for a whirl in PvP. I heard prot pally is doing much better now.